Switzerland: Hatred beneath the harmony

The Swiss claim passivity, diversity and tolerance as founding values. They have grown rich through trade and banking the world's money. They give shelter to wealthy migrants seeking to escape taxes at home. Their country even houses the offices of many international organisations, including large parts of the UN. But yesterday the Swiss pulled aside their veneer of internationalism, voting heavily in favour of a referendum motion that will change the Swiss constitution to ban the building of minarets.

The result – on a 53% turnout – should shame Switzerland and worry Europe. Although the vote was ostensibly about minarets, of which there are only four in the whole country, and not even mosques, which can still be built, voters were really being lured to express their views on religion and race.

Some things about the campaign were specifically Swiss, principally an Alpine distrust of outsiders which lapsed into racism. No other European country would have accepted with relative equanimity a poster campaign displaying a black-veiled Muslim woman and a forest of missile-like minarets imposed on the pure red and white of the Swiss flag. In Switzerland this monstrosity was endorsed by the country's largest party, although opposed by the rest. The Swiss People's party has tried the trick before, thriving in the 2007 federal election on the back of an even more explicit poster showing three white sheep, standing on the red background of the Swiss flag, kicking out a fourth black one, above the slogan "for more security". No one, in the context of the far right, should mistake the provocative nature of a campaign fought in the Nazi colours of red, black and white.

Switzerland will suffer as a result of yesterday's vote, its cherished national brand tarnished. But it is too easy to blame the Swiss alone. Many of the things that drove yesterday's vote – growing opposition to migration, the rise of the far right, widespread hatred and fear of Islam – apply just as much to other European countries, including Britain. This raises an uncomfortable possibility. Was yesterday's result a product of Swiss exceptionalism, or simply the chance existence in Switzerland of a political system that allows popular referendums? Can we be sure that the people of Austria, France, Britain or the Netherlands would have voted differently, if given the chance?

All European countries find the politics of migration painful. Even the new EU president, Herman Van Rompuy, once attacked Turkey's application to join the EU, as it threatened "fundamental values of Christianity". Hatred lies just beneath the harmony. Politicians who provoke it threaten to cause terrible harm.